An unnecessary death by taser in Bloomfield
Jim Rogers was tased eight times by Pittsburgh Police in Bloomfield in October. Human bodies can’t process that level of electrical shock without repercussions, and in Jim Rogers’ case, that meant his death.
His end had an innocent beginning. When a man on Harriet Street couldn’t sell a bike he no longer needed, he put it outside with the understanding that it was free to anyone who could provide a good home to it.
Armed with a belief he wouldn’t be seen as a thief for riding off with a bike placed on the sidewalk by an owner who wanted to get rid of it, Mr. Rogers, 54, took the bike for a spin before returning it to the lawn where he found it. It wasn’t a good fit, apparently.
By then, someone had called the cops who were on the alert for a bicycle thief fitting Mr. Rogers’ description. The cops were determined to send a message that such thievery would not be tolerated in Bloomfield.
Suddenly, there he was. Mr. Rogers had returned to the scene of the not-a-crime with a bike he hadn’t stolen.
Mr. Rogers lived in a nearby apartment, and he was standing on a front porch smoking a cigarette when the still unidentified Pittsburgh police officer yelled to him to put his hands behind his back.
Mr. Rogers shouted back that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He had not committed a crime or attempted to commit one. He had returned a bike he couldn’t use.
The officer shouted to Mr. Rogers multiple times to put his hands behind his back before warning him that he would be tased. Mr. Rogers was just as adamant that he hadn’t done anything deserving of hostile police action or arrest.
“The officer was just yelling at the suspect to put his hands behind his back. The suspect kept saying just like, ‘I didn’t do anything,’ and I guess he was trying to talk to the officer, and the officer just wasn’t having it,” said Ryan Cohn, a Harriet Street resident who witnessed the tasing from his third-floor window.
Unlike so many other encounters, it was not captured on video, but it was recorded on the officer’s body-cam. But even without a civilian recording of the encounter, it isn’t difficult to imagine what happened.
Once again, an unarmed Black man who wasn’t a physical threat to the officer shouting at him suddenly became an existential threat to the cop’s authority by failing to comply.
The unidentified cop’s ego was on the line, and he didn’t want to lose face in front of so many witnesses in a comfortable East End neighborhood.
Because the officer knew nothing about de-escalation tactics — or simply chose not to use that knowledge — he repeatedly tased Mr. Rogers who fell down and screamed he hadn’t done anything wrong. Mr. Rogers was tased again, again and again for a total of eight times.
One neighbor came out of a house to shout at the officer for his tactics. In pain, confusion and literal shock, Mr. Rogers insisted he hadn’t done anything wrong.
The officer was too afraid of Mr. Rogers to attempt putting cuffs on him even after stunning him with dangerous levels of electric shock, so he called for backup. Three more cops arrived to present a united front against the alleged bicycle thief who was on the ground. Eventually, a dozen cops arrived on the scene to handle an unarmed man who hadn’t committed a crime.
There are published reports that two emergency medical technicians on the scene failed to aid Mr. Rogers but did manage to decontaminate several cops who had been spattered with the suspect’s blood.
After he was placed in a police vehicle bound for Allegheny County Jail, Mr. Rogers suffered what was initially described as “a medical emergency” and diverted to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead the following morning. There are published reports that Mr. Rogers asked for medical help 13 times after he was tased.
Jim Rogers’ family and demonstrators who would not let the matter drop demanded that the police release unedited footage of his arrest along with the names of the officers and EMTs involved in the incident.
The police refused, but the Critical Incident Review Board, an internal watchdog, began working on recommendations it shared with the public on Tuesday. It lists “a series of procedural failures” that took place during the arrest of Jim Rogers and policy changes the Pittsburgh police will implement to avoid taser deaths in the future.
There was no formal apology to the Rogers family, but on Monday, the Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety announced that eight Pittsburgh police officers, including two supervisors, will face discipline for the death, depending on their roles and levels of negligence or inaction.
This is extraordinary. Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott Schubert admitted in a statement that the police force he supervises “failed our fellow citizen.”
Even Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala, who is usually slow to criticize the police for anything, has hinted that there’s a possibility of a review of “additional criminal conduct.” When DA Zappala thinks the death of a citizen in police custody looks bad, then someone has messed up royally.
Along with disciplinary action, the review board recommended the following, long overdue procedural updates for taser use by police:
• Any use of force incident will require the presence of a supervisor on scene to complete a medical assessment and request appropriate personnel.
•Any incident involving the deployment of a taser will require EMS personnel to assess the patient.
• City police personnel will be retrained in accordance with established training academy duty to intervene policy.
• Police will streamline its organizational review of use of force by both appropriate command staff and the training academy to expeditiously ensure policy compliance.
This is arguably the most conscientious response to a civilian death at the hands of police in my memory. It is proactive, practical and an acknowledgment by the police that current training is poor and a threat to the public.
Jim Rogers was not a threat to the arresting officers or his colleagues, yet he’s dead. He experienced unnecessary trauma during an arrest that shouldn’t have taken place. The crime he was accused of — stealing a bike — did not happen.
Mr. Rogers’ “sin” was being outraged about being arrested, which was not a capital crime the last time any of us looked. The police should not have the option to kill civilians just because they aren’t immediately compliant or dare to be verbally belligerent in return. Cops are not gods and shouldn’t have the unilateral power to kill without consequences.
Imagine how different the outcome could’ve been if the officer, after spotting Mr. Rogers on a porch smoking a cigarette, had simply asked him what happened. Isn’t it likely Mr. Rogers would’ve pointed to the bike? If he had been treated like a human instead of a suspect, wouldn’t that have been a better way to go? The officer could’ve then questioned the bike’s owner and assessed whether it had been stolen or not.
With the bike back in the owner’s custody, the issue of theft had been rendered moot. The officer could’ve gone about his day without killing someone, whether unintentionally or not. Wouldn’t that have been infinitely preferable to what actually happened?
What happened to Jim Rogers could’ve been just another sad chapter in Pittsburgh history, but I’m hopeful that taser use will become rarer in the coming years as cops learn de-escalating skills. Pittsburgh’s police brass know they have a problem with this current crop, and they’re addressing it as best they can within a culture that doesn’t admit easily to screwups.
Disciplinary action against eight cops may be little comfort to a family mourning the senseless death of a loved one whose only crime was riding on a bike that was given away, but it should be encouraging to everyone else that Jim Rogers didn’t die in vain. His death was noticed by the entire community.
The police are responding to community demands. Still, they have a long way to go. Police body-cam video from that day still needs to be released, and there should be a public accounting of the officers punished for their actions or inactions. If they violated procedures, tell us what they did wrong. The public has a right to know what’s being done to address those failures. Any one of us could’ve been Jim Rogers that day.
In the end, justice for taking a civilian’s life should be a whole lot weightier than bureaucratic mea culpas. No one should die for not stealing a bike.